Flora,
Further to your comment on Phil's "speculative" rating on BCB,
I think most of us understand that. However, he also stated a
year ago that he saw 1997 revenues quadrupling to $4.3 million and
a whopping $43 million by the year 2000. What I would like to hear
from Phil is, now that his 12 months are up and his
subsequent "accumulate" recommendation in July at $0.20 and has
since shrunken yet another 25%, where does he now stand on this
company, and have his projections for the near and long term
changed, and if so, to what?
You have to understand our cynicism. We constantly see analysts'
recommendations, but all too seldom do we see honest follow-up
when those recommendations do not come close to panning out. As for
Investors Digest, a publication to which we have subscribed for
several years, but for which we will certainly will not go for an
automatic renewal, their "reputable" status may be a tad subjective.
They pay lip service to following up on their contributor's
recommendations (a new feature), but I have yet to see any on the
stocks I followed, including BCB, that were originally touted by ID.
Nor have I been able to find any kind of electronic access to Phil
Speller, his company, PWS Associates, Investors Digest and its
publisher, MPL Communications. MPL Communications, by the way, is a
mass-producer type shop of all kinds of "investment" related vehicles.
One has to wonder if their original focus of educating their clients
hasn't slipped somewhat to simply getting more clients. I know, I do.
I would have to say that MPL's "reputation" is a good deal more hype
than fact.
And ever since my first subscription to one of MPL's publications, I
have been inundated with direct mail to subscribe to a plethora of
MPL offerings. To top it off, I have been unsuccessful in having
my name removed from their overall mailing list. I do want to say
that my ID experience hasn't been all bad - they do have a number of
educational and interesting articles such as the quarterly DRIP
report, the monthly brokerage forecast report and the monthly
company key ratio report. You will notice that none of these is
specific company related. I have been burned enough on these to the
point I barely give them (specific stock recommendations) a passing
glance. In fact, I would say if a stock is not
being followed by a brokerage house so its forecast can be
included in the ID monthly report, it shouldn't be in the ID at all!
But why am I telling you this? If I had access to MPL, I'd be
sending this to them. At least you can get a feel for what we in
the real world experience, and possibly convey that to Phil. Maybe
we will get a relevant response. And hopefully there is a message
here for BCB as well. This goes back several postings when we
were talking about BCB's visibility. Some of us definitely feel
that if BCB could get a brokerage house's attention, (rather than
some individual "analyst"), that the market would be more likely
to sit up and take notice.
JJ |
